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Thursday, September 27, 2012

Just a couple of weeks after my dear friend Harold passed away, I received bad news again: my dear friend Myrta Rivera (one of those few people we like to call ‘our family’ in Canada) lost her battle with breast cancer at the young age of 68. I knew she was a very important and respected member of our community but I didn’t get the whole idea until I read the reaction in the media.

Originally from Puerto Rico, she came to Canada many years ago and once here, she worked with the Multicultural Centre for years. She was the first person many immigrants would meet and trust, and I just could not think of a better way to be welcomed to that wonderful country. Once she left the KWMC, she fulfilled her dream of becoming a chaplain and served at St. Mary’s General Hospital until shortly before her death.

Myrta was a member of my church, so I met her (and her husband David) singing together in the choir. I also had the pleasure of working alongside her in many occasions, particularly when we formed a search committee to hire new ministers. I really enjoyed working with this caring, compassionate woman who might have looked frail sometimes but was, without a doubt, a tough cookie. It was very common for her to let her emotions take over and even shed some tears when speaking, because she was passionate about a lot of things. Her faith, her family, our church and our community were some of those things.

I had a lot of fun with Myrta, particularly because she was the only person at church back then I could speak Spanish with; I learned a lot and I feel better as a person for having knowing her. I befriended her and her husband David with the years, and they quickly became some of my favourite people. They were very close and supportive of each other, and David (a former MPP) took care of her during the last few months, while Myrta wrote a fantastic chronicle of her bout with this cancer that took over her life in such an aggressive manner… In a very sad turn of events, David fell at home last week and hurt his spine, so he was in a hospital, semi-paralyzed, as Myrta was beginning her new journey.

Monday, September 24, 2012

There was some sort of a community celebration at a neighbourhood park last Saturday, so I took Florencia with me and headed there to join in the fun. Flor met her good friend Julia once she got there and away they went, running around and making sure that they went on each one of the inflatable castles and other attractions they had brought for the occasion.

I couldn't get Santi, Caro or Juan to come as well, of course. They're all teenagers now, so this kind of events are not attractive to them anymore. They will surely prefer to stay home watching TV, playing games, posting absurd statuses on Facebook or Twitter or just doing nothing.

I soon realized that I didn't have many more years of Florencia being 'a kid' either. She's going to be 9 in exactly one month, so she's already beginning to show subtle signs of a transition that is just around the corner. The years of cuddling, wrestling, tickling and hugging with my kids are coming to an end; they're not 'kids' anymore. It wasn't exactly an epiphany, but more of a rather obvious realization, but I still felt a wave of melancholy and -why not- even sadness covering me at that same moment.

I got on my knees, hugged Flor and told her:

- Go with your friend and have all the fun in the world, I will be watching you from that bench if you need me.

Florencia left, running happily, and I just sat there, looking down, thinking about empty nests and the fact that I am indeed getting old. I was still lost in this train of thought, wondering what I was going to do with my life once the kids were all gone, when I heard this very familiar voice right behind me:

- Alone?

It was Gaby, who had come to join us. Her timing had been impeccable, as usual. I immediately realized that she was the answer to my questions and my worries. I know the kids will eventually leave the house, but they will always be close to us. And as long as I have this wonderful woman by my side, like I had in the last 20+ years, I will never have to feel lonely, because I will never be alone. Growing old with her will be a fantastic experience.

Santiago is a heavy sleeper, but he's also known for his sleep walking and the fact that he sleeps with his eyes partially open. Watching him sleep is, well, unsettling.

It's not uncommon for him to start to talk in the middle of the night or to come downstairs at 2:00 AM, in his underwear, and stand behind me without making any noise while I'm working, until I turn around and find him looking at me with that blank stare... Well, he scares the heck out of me.

This day, however, he just made me laugh hard. I went to wake him up that morning and he sat up immediately, looking at me with that blank stare I know so well. He then started to look around in disbelief, until he finally asked me, surprised and angry at the same time:

Monday, September 17, 2012

It's known that I'm not a person who will stop to think about the meaning of our existances. Life has turned me into a pragmatic and expeditive person, if you want. I will analyze a problem, make an informed decision and I will just not look back. This capacity of being able to see the big picture, is something I value a lot and normally gives peace of mind, but that can also make people who don't know me well a little uneasy.

I still remember that poor guy who I used to work with back in 1994/95, who came to see me at the hospital after my accident. This guy, arrogant and bitter, had a miserable live which include some love troubles: he worked with his girlfirend, but was at the same time involved with our manager, who was married. He hated me with passion because he could not understand the fact that I always seemed to be in a good mood. He was convinced that I was the 'fakest' guy of the planet.

This poor idiot still came to visit me to the hospital, maybe hoping he would find me distraught and depressed. Big mistake: he found me looking like crap, with a broken hip, my chest covered in bruises and my face... well, let's not talk about my face. But he arrived minutes after I had been told that Gaby hadn't sustained any major injuries and her pregnancy was no longer at risk. Even more, she was on her way back home to continue resting there (we had been ICU neighbours for a few hours). My 'beloved' co-worker arrived and asked me, pretending to be concerned:

- How are you? ('Now I've got you', he must have thought)- I'm great, very happy!!! Gaby and the baby are well, and all I have is a broken hip. We should have gotten killed; we were really lucky!!!

That was it for him.

- How can you say that 'you're great'??!! Haven't you looked at your self??!! You look like sh**!!!

They walked him outside and I only saw him once again. Poor little thing, he didn't have the mental or intellectual capacity to understand that there were things in life way more important that the way you look one day. This guy got his revenge, though: he took advantage of my absence to blame for every problem the software we were developing had, and the situation reached a point in which I could not go back to work there. Thank God, I should add.

Coming back to the subject of this post, I was working in Moultrie, Georgia, a couple months ago, updating the radiology software at the local hospital. During one of my (few) breaks, I walked to the vending machines to get a Diet Coke and I happened to walk by the nursery on my way there. That's when I saw something I had never seen before since I started working with this company: a newborn baby.

She was all naked, still purple, and with tubes coming out of her body, the poor thing. She was -at best- 10, 15 minutes old. Her chest was shaking almost with violence due to her rapid breathing, and her face showed the effort she was making. This little girl wasn't having a good time, not yet.

But she had her fists up, like a boxer on his way to the centre of the ring, ready for Round 1.

I have to accept that watching this little girl with her guard up and fighting for his life from the first minute moved me. She was oh so little, so fragile and still was more brave than most adults I know, including myself! I hope life doesn't give her too many reasons to keep her fists up.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

I haven't done one of these posts in a while! I grew up surrounded by music, why with my father playing guitar or just singing all t he time. He never knew a word in English, but could sing songs by Pat Boone, Tab Hunters and others perfectly, because he had learned the lyrics by pure phonetics. He instilled the love for the music from the 50's in me, so I thought it would be a nice idea to post a few videos of songs that he loved to sing, and songs that I still love to listen to.

Friday, September 14, 2012

I am a big guy, so I'm of course very self conscious about my appearance. There's a lot of things I don't do because I know I can't anymore, and other things that I won't do just to avoid embarrassment. Among those things, we should include 'going on a roller coaster'.

We all went to Canada Wonderland, a big amusement park outside of Toronto a few weeks ago. Since we knew we were going in two cars, we invited Florencia's best friend Alejandro. Unfortunately, Flor caught a fever the night before, and was feeling so miserable that she asked to stay home that day. I volunteered to stay with her since I should not go on a roller coaster.

By 1 PM Flor was feeling much better, so I asked her if she wanted to give it a shot and joint the rest at the park. She said yes so away we went. Gaby was very happy to see us there, and Alejandro was just elated.

Knowing that I wasn't going to able to go on any rides (either due to my size or my high blood pressure), I got ready for a day of lots of walking and little rest. I was lucky to go into the pool for about an hour, but that was it. Later in the evening, the big guys went for the biggest roller coaster (Leviathan) while Flor and Alejandro went to the younger kids section. Since Gaby was taking back packs and towels to the car, I went along with them and asked them which ride they wanted to go on first. "The roller coaster", they said.

Somehow I decided that it would be a good idea to join them, since it wasn't a big one; we lined up, and we were lucky enough to get to sit at the very front of the train. I was in the first row (by myself) and the kids right behind me.

That's when the problem started. It was a kid's ride, so... I wouldn't fit on the seat. I tried to get my butt in there and I heard a crack: I had just broken my Blackberry case, which I had forgotten to remove. I put it away, embarrassed, and somehow I got in there. But then they tried to lowered the seat belt...

They hit and hit my belly until it started to hurt. I would hold my breath (as if that would have helped), but there was no way they could fasten it. I realized that there was a lot of people looking at me and waiting so they could get on the ride, so I simply got off my seat and wave at the kids wishing them to enjoy.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

I've been out of the country for too long. The 12th anniversary of the day I left my country is coming soon; I left to live in a new country, with a new culture, a different language, a history and an idiosyncrasy that was completely different than mine. Looking back, I would say that it was a very positive experience so far, even though those who read me periodically know well how difficult our first year in Canada was.

I have talked about this several times: in the beginning, our whole family and friends were all over us, wanting to know everything about our experience in the new continent. They wanted updates, pictures, they wanted to know everything. It was due to that, and also due to the persistence of friends like G. Ziegler that I ended putting the story of my first year in Canada (which I had on MS Word) on this blog, in the format of a series of posts, because even then many still wanted to know what had happened to us. But as time passed, us being away gradually stopped being the news of the day and our loved ones began to get used to the idea of us not being around anymore. Our absence, strongly felt at first, became easier to tolerate and with the years it became almost natural and expected.

I don't complain, because I have nothing to complain about. The decision of leaving ARG was our decision, and I would be very selfish (and delusional) if I expected everybody to be thinking about us all the time. Some things that happened did hurt me, of course, but I had to understand that. For example, one of my aunts passed away a month before my own father died. She was not only my aunt but my godmother too. I found out about her passing through the obituary on my hometown's newspaper. What happened was normal: everybody assumed somebody else had notified me. Again, there was no complaint from my side; if anything, it was the confirmation of the fact that I wasn't part of my family's daily lives anymore. It's tough, but you gotta get used to it.

I had the chance to come back a couple of times since I left, but it never was for a good reason. The first time was a few weeks after the death of my father, and the second shortly after the accident my brother had, in which my sister-in-law, a beautiful woman in all senses, lost her life. I was able to be there eventually, but I wasn't there when I would have been really needed. You learn of these news on the phone, you hang up and you sit down in a daze, knowing that there is absolutely nothing you can do, because it would take you a minimum of one day to get there. That is incredibly tough. Due to that, of course, I haven't had the chance -like luckily Gaby and the kids did- of going to Argentina just to rest, visit and enjoy myself. I would love to go there for a week or two someday, and split my time between Necochea and Buenos Aires, visiting family and close friends. I know that the chances of me being able to do this are very slim but well, one can dream.

One thing that I did experienced, and with this I finally get to the point, is that everything changes once you leave. When I went back to Buenos Aires the last time, I felt like a complete foreigner in my own country, more than I have ever felt in Canada. Their customs were not mine anymore; I couldn't relate with the people and their times. I was overwhelmed by all the rush and how grayish everything looked; I couldn't recognize anybody in the news and I was horrified to see the topics that were discussed on TV during the day, when the kids are back from school... Buenos Aires was too much for me that time. I didn't have the chance to go to Necochea, so I don't know how I would have had fared in there. Santi told me he had the best time of his life when he went on March of this year, so who knows, maybe I would have had been able to disconnect and enjoy as well...

The other thing that caught my attention was what happened to me as I met with my family and friends again. In some cases I would find people who were exactly the same as I remembered them, and others who would impress me with how much they had changed. In both cases, these could have meant either a good or bad thing. Allow me to elaborate: I would meet somebody, think "wow, he/she is the same as always" and feel really happy about that, and some other times that would be a really bad thing. :-)

What I didn't process back then was the fact that it was ME the one who had changed the most. Maybe, one of the things that changed in my life and my personality was my degree of tolerance. Who knows, there could have been things that were not a problem for me back then but I had a hard time accepting now, and vice versa. It was a strange exercise, because I felt forced to get to know my family and friends all over again. In some cases, rediscovering someone made me feel very good, and in some others I felt sad when I realized that the years had created a distance between the two of us. Again, that's the law of life. I'm sure that when I go back in five, ten, fifteen years, things will be completely different than the previous times, but never like they were before I left.

There is a tango, one of the most famous, sung by Carlos Gardel. Its name is 'Volver' ('Coming back'), and its lyrics say: "...to feel that life is just a breeze, that twenty years is nothing...". Well, I will disagree. I did go back and yes, I felt that life is like a breeze, but twenty years surely look like a lot to me. Way too many.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

It finally arrived. After an eternity that lasted 14 days, we're ready to go for the biggest game in our lives. Santi's team is playing the final game of the Ontario Cup today at 3PM, and a win will have our team going to the Nationals in Nova Scotia in October. We're all equally excited and terrified.

I'm not your average parent-turned-into-coach-who-gets-very-defensive-when-somebody-criticizes-my-baby kind of guy. I'm very aware of Santi's skills and also his areas for growth. I know very well that Santi is not the 'star' of the team. Even more, I'd say that Santi would probably be in the Top 5 of most classifications we could come up with (by skills, by speed, by stamina, by ability to 'read' a game...) but he would probably not be the top player in any of those. There is one thing that Santi has that most players do not, and that will be the key for his success: his drive. My son loves this game, he breathes soccer. He plays with intensity, but also with intelligence. He's the one who is going to be there when nobody else seems to be showing up.

He has a strange quality: he shows the best of him when the pressure is really high. He is (almost) always the highest performer when the games are really important, and he always leaves his mark. He is the one who scored two goals and assisted the other two when we won the league last year. He's also the one who scored the lone goal at the BMO field when we won our Provincial League in May. He also scored the winning goal in the most exciting game we've ever played when we beat Ottawa in group stage for this same cup, and he's the one who scored a fantastic goal and got chosen MVP two weeks ago when we beat this country's #2 team in semifinals.

I'm very confident in our chances today. I like the fact that nobody gives a dime for us, because that's exactly what happened at every game on our way to this final. I know our guys are going to work really hard today, and I know that win or lose, I will be proud of them.

I also fully expect Santi to be the 'hero' again today. I hope he gets to play that vital role again and has the greatest moment of his life. I will be just happy to get to see that from the bench.

If you want to follow the game, check our team's Twitter account @unitedfc95

Friday, September 07, 2012

Yesterday I heard the cicadas for the first time so far this summer. At the same time, trees are beginning to show all kinds of oranges, yellows and browns (even some purple!). It's a clear indication of the fact that the fall is just around the corner. Since that is my favourite season of the year, I'm quite happy about it!

I also want this summer to end. It's been really good from the soccer side of things, but forgettable in many other aspects. I have two dear friends who are going through the last few days of their lives and that makes me very sad. There have been other events that have also affected me (negatively) in a big way, and spending a lot of time away from home didn't help either. For the first time in my life, I actually stopped and took a look at what I was doing, and to the changes I need to make so I can live a better, healthier life.

The most beautiful season of the year (at least here in Canada), the Fall, is upon us. For me, it means it's time to get up and start walking again.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Today is an historical day for this region. Elizabeth Witmer, who was MPP (member of the Provincial Parlament) representing this district for over 20 years (between 1990 and 2012), resigned earlier this year to assume his new position in charge of the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board. This has prompted the Province to call for a byelection to find a replacement (something also happening in Vaughan, north of Toronto).

Like never before, the outcome of today's election is very important. The Provincial Legislative Assembly has 107 members, currently distributed like this:

Liberal Party: 52

Conservative Party: 36

New Democratic Party: 17

Vacant: 2

If Liberals won both in Kitchener-Waterloo and Vaughan, Dalton Mc Guinty would be regaining a majority, something he lost by one seat in the last election. Since Vaughan is a traditionally Liberal district, it's expected they will get seat #53 over there. The attention has now turned into our region, because it's known that K-W has a tradition of having Conservative MPPs. The interesting thing is that, according to recent polls, it's neither the Liberals nor the Conservative who look like they are going to win this thing, but the New Democratic Party, locally led by Catherine Fife.

It'd be interesting to see what happens if the 'orange' guys win here, showing that the legacy of their recently deceased leader Jack Layton is still alive. The NDP is on its way to become the second minority of this country. But for that to happen, they will have to put on their long pants, and stop doing stupid things like appointing local celebrities or 19 year old kids, both with no experience whatsoever, as candidates. They need to give those spots to qualified, apt people who have been working within the Party for years. We will see what happens.

A curiosity. Gaby went to work today, wearing her orange shirt, as always. Santi went to school wearing an orange shirt, and I'm wearing an orange polo myself. Was this a coincidence or a veiled support for the NDP? :-)

Somebody was at the door as I was finishing my last paragraph. It was a man giving me pamphlets for today's election. He smiled when he saw me wearing orange! I still don't know who to vote for yet, though...